For spring 2014 at the house of Dior, Raf Simons wanted to create ‘a distinct new tribe of women, both savage and sophisticated at the same time’. That vision, set down in the shownotes, was borne out by a masterful melding of the atelier’s famous signatures with progressive shapes and colours, as well as a dose of Simons’ innovative irreverence.

The first looks comprised deconstructed black blazers, some sliced at empire line, others topping chintz-y floral print chiffon skirts, and some cropped, collarless and with rounded, dropped shoulders. Then came printed skirts, looped up into black bustiers, topped off with a badge of raw-edged tweed, the same size and shape as you might find on a school blazer – the identifier for this new breed of fashionable creature.

Simons collection developed along a similar theme to his global culture-themed haute couture show in July – that mix of the chic and the street, the status quo challenged, traditional Western meets the unfamiliar, cast Dior signatures in a new and slightly alien light. And that ethic, which Simons has dubbed ‘Trans Dior’, was at the heart of the range he presented today, too. There were shirt-dresses with Western collars but buttons that took the asymmetrical line of a Chinese cheong-sam tunic, and skirts of metallic lace twisted and draped like kanga sarongs.

The show venue itself was festooned with flowers – with almost too many of them, in fact, so that they felt deliberately oppressive. 'A beautiful rose garden becomes poisonous,' as Simons put it. And the floral motifs in the collection took that line too. Graphically, they were a paradoxical point between painterly and hyper-real, picked out in either in deliberately saccharine colours, such as powder blue and baby pink, or jarring acid tones – orange and apple green.

‘So much about Dior is about nature and there is the idea that you can’t change nature,’ Simons said. ‘But I wanted to go against the very nature of things.’

A finale of silver metallic jacquard and floral pieces perhaps felt more familiar, some mimicking Dior’s famous A-line and H-line, others taking as their references the sack back and the lampshade tunic.

Much of the collection was counter-intuitive: diagonally pleated skirts and shorts flowing from beneath stricter tailoring, and a new skirt shape – let’s call it the mini-hobble: bagged out at the hips and fitted above the knee - may not immediately seem the most flattering of shapes, but Simons is courting a fashionable cognoscenti for whom that is not a primary concern.

These were clothes that laid out a very specific directive, echoing that of the founder's 1947 New Look when it first appeared and caused commotion among the consuming public. Join the tribe or don’t, Simons suggested. And you can be fairly sure most people will.

Click the gallery to view every look from the Christian Dior spring 2014 collection